Thaumaturgia by An Oxonian
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page 12 of 314 (03%)
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Where all the best christians resort.
Thus dress'd up in full masquerade, He the bolder can range up and down For he better can drive on his trade, In any one's name than his own. To be brief, the devil, it appears, is by far too cunning still for mankind, and continues to manage things in his own way, in spite of bishops, priests, laymen, and new churches. He governs the vices and propensities of men by methods peculiarly his own; though every crime or extortion, subterfuge or design, whether it be upon the purse or the person, will not make a man a devil; it must nevertheless be confessed, that every crime, be its magnitude or complexion what it may, puts the criminal, in some measure, into the devil's power, and gives him an ascendancy and even a title to the delinquent, whom he ever afterwards treats in a very magisterial manner. We are told that every man has his attendant evil genius, or tutelary spirit, to execute the orders of the master demon--that the attending evil angel sees every move we make upon the board; witnesses all our actions, and permits us to do mischief, and every thing that is pernicious to ourselves;--that, on the contrary, our good spirit, actuated by more benevolent motives, is always accessary to our good actions, and reluctant to those that are bad. If this be the case, it may be fairly asked, how does it happen that those two contending spirits do not quarrel and give each other black eyes and broken heads during their rivalship for pre-eminence? And why does the evil tempting spirit so often prevail? |
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